Tag Archives: Star Trek: First Contact

Sep 5 2023

Star Trek’s Many Timelines

By now Star Trek fans acknowledge that the official canon timelines of the Star Trek franchise is daunting. Being that Star Trek is 57 years old there are bound to be continuity problems but what has been more glaring are contradictions with the timeline and the more “modern” look of current-day Star Trek that clashes with older series.

There have been pretzel-twisting explanations in the TV shows and films to explain the contradictions, but they tend to fall apart on closer examination or are just ridiculous. More and more, fans have to accept the fact that either modern Trek is a soft reboot of the franchise or it represents new timelines that branched off the original Trek ages ago.

When Star Trek was relaunched in 2009 with the film Star Trek it was a good vehicle to reboot the franchise but the filmmakers did not want to completely alienate many fans. So an explanation was given that the events of Star Trek took place in an alternate reality that was created when the film’s Romulan bad guys time traveled to a time before the original series and changed the timeline.

However, this was not the first time that an alternate timeline was created in Star Trek. Actually this has happened many times in previous Star Trek TV shows starting with the original.

In the classic episode, “City on the Edge of Forever” a new timeline was created when Dr. McCoy went back in time and changed history so that the United States never entered World War II. This created a timeline where presumably the United Federation of Planets or Starfleet did not exist. Supposedly, the original timeline was restored when Kirk and Spock went back in time themselves and prevented McCoy from altering history. Or did they? The timeline McCoy created would still exist simply because he traveled to that pre-World War II period. Remember the scene where the hobo steals McCoy’s phaser and accidently kills himself? That created a new timeline where that man no longer existed. Even if that man never amounted to anything, his erasure would create a small ripple in time and this was never corrected by the end of the episode.

Here are some more examples: In Star Trek: First Contact, the crew of the Enterprise-E journey back to the mid-21st century to prevent the Borg from assimilating Earth. The Borg’s actions wound up killing many people who were involved with humanity’s first faster-than-light voyage. Even Riker and La Forge joined Zefram Cochrane to pilot the Phoenix, the first human-made warp ship. This created a new timeline even though the Enterprise-E crew stopped the Borg and the people the Borg killed remained dead. The crew interacted with people in the past including Cochrane, who was now aware of his destiny and this certainly had an impact on how he acted.

In Star Trek: Enterprise, a major arc involved the aliens called the Xindii who attacked Earth in the 22nd century, but it was revealed that such an attack never took place in the original timeline. More importantly, this attack was never undone when the story arc ended and was now part of the established canon timeline. It was stated that these incidents were part of a so-called Temporal Cold War that took place centuries in the future.

Another instance of the Star Trek timeline being changed was in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”. In that episode those pesky Romulans are revealed to have changed the original Trek timeline in that they prevented the rise of Khan and the outbreak of World War III from the original time of the 1990s. Now these events are supposed to take place in the middle of the 21st century and evidence of this change was shown in Star Trek: First Contact when it was mentioned that the war took place in the mid-21st century.

There are many other instances of permanently changed timelines throughout Star Trek but in the end it does not matter too much. The real-world reason for these changes are to keep Trek relevant with our times. After all, it would be strange to keep saying that the Eugenics Wars and World War III took place in the 1990s or that the dated look of the original TV show with buttons on consoles is supposed to represent a realistic future for humanity. There have been non-canon efforts such as novels to try to explain this away but the results are nonsensical.

The best advice is to just accept that the Star Trek timelines are very fluicdic. Do not give it too much thought and enjoy the stories.

May 8 2013

Star Trek Movie Retrospective–Star Trek: First Contact

“The line must be drawn HERE! This far, no farther! I…will make them PAY for what they’ve done!”

Captain Jean-Luc Picard ranting about the Borg

posterWhen producers started making the eighth Star Trek film, they knew it had to deliver big. The previous film was successful but received criticisms over its quality. So for Star Trek: First Contact they brought out the big guns in the form of the Borg, the most popular villains on the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG). And it worked.

It opens with a close up shot of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) looking straight ahead. The camera pulls back to reveal he’s inside the nightmarish machinery of a Borg vessel. What’s worse is his transformation into one of them and losing his identity. The Borg are a cold, and nearly invincible cyborg race made up of assorted aliens that are forcibly converted using painful looking cybernetic implants. They seek the perfect union between machine and life and assimilating other races to achieve this objective.

cast

Picard eventually wakes up from the nightmare, which was a flashback to his ordeal in the classic two-part episode “The Best Of Both Worlds”. He’s onboard his new ship, the Enterprise-E and receives news that the Borg have returned to Federation space. However, instead of being ordered to join an assembled armada to fight the Borg, he is to patrol the Romulan Neutral Zone with his ship.

He and his crew are visibly restless about their orders. Later as they carry them out, his first officer Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) complains about the orders, Picard tells him that Starfleet feels that his own experiences with being turned into a Borg will compromise his ability to fight them.

Just then he and the crew pick up transmissions from the fight. Things aren’t going well for the Starfleet armada, it’s losing badly to the Borg. Having heard enough, Picard decides to disobey orders and join the fight, with his crew behind him. The Enterprise-E then warps off at its highest speed to Earth.

borg battle2

The very next scene features a mammoth and imposing Borg cube that fills the screen, accompanied by a booming score, as it nears our planet. It’s slammed by weapons fire from Starfleet ships. Unlike “The Best Of Both Worlds” the ships are putting up a better fight, but are still losing. New and eye-catching Starfleet ships abound, one of them is the Defiant, the scrappy escort vessel seen in the TV show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9). Commanding the Defiant is the Klingon Lt. Commander Worf (Michael Dorn), who in between films, joined DS9. His damaged ship is caught in a tractor beam from the cube.

borg battleThe  Enterprise-E suddenly joins the fray, rescues the Defiant and beams aboard its survivors. Moments later, Worf joins his old comrades at the bridge, completing the film reunion. Picard takes command of the fleet and orders a simultaneous barrage of weapons fire at specific spots on the cube.

In a spectacular display, the Starfleet ships fire a vicious volley at the Borg cube and destroy it. However, before it explodes, the cube releases a smaller, sphere-shaped vessel that rushes towards Earth.

The Enterprise-E is on its tail as a temporal vortex opens up in front of the Borg sphere that leaves behind borg earthan energy wake that washes over the Enterprise-E.  After the sphere disappears into the vortex, the horrified crew of the starship see the Earth before them become Borgified. The planet’s colorful landmasses are transformed into one continuous field of metallic grey.

They  deduce that the sphere traveled to Earth’s past and assimilated the planet. The ship’s android operations officer Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) theorizes that the wake protected them from being changed with the altered timeline. Before the vortex can close, Picard orders the Enterprise-E to go through it.

The sphere emerges from the vortex and begins attacking a small, rundown town in Montana. The Enterprise-E arrives a few minutes later and destroys the sphere. They learn they’re in the mid 21st century, April 4, 2063 to be exact, about ten years after World War III. Based on that information, Picard realizes that the Borg want to stop Zefram Cochrane, the human inventor of warp drive technology, from successfully testing Earth’s first warp drive ship, the Phoenix. Its flight on the next day will attract the attention of a passing Vulcan ship, which will then travel to Earth. The resulting peaceful first contact will eventually lead to the founding of the United Federation of Planets.

Fearing the worst, Picard with an Away Team beams down to the town, which actually has a missile complex. picard dataEven though most of the personnel in the complex are dead, Cochrane’s assistant and co-pilot Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) is found alive but suffering from radiation poisoning. She’s taken back to the ship for treatment by Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) while Picard looks for Cochrane. The Phoenix (actually a converted nuclear missile) is damaged but repairable.

Throughout the film, Picard was able to hear Borg voices in his head, a residual effect of his ordeal after being assimilated. He hears them again and returns to the ship with Data, while having Riker beam down to continue looking for Cochrane. Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge (Levar Burton) also beams down with a team to repair the Phoenix and continue with the planned flight.

Back on the Enterprise-E, the bridge crew discover that they are losing control over several systems and cannot contact main engineering. It soon becomes apparent that there are Borg drones onboard the starship. The captain theorizes that before the sphere was destroyed several Borg must’ve beamed onboard undetected to assimilate the starship. Acting quickly, Picard orders Data to lock out the main computer and heads to main engineering with a security team. Picard’s plan is to puncture the warp core’s plasma coolant tanks, which will flood engineering and liquefy all organic matter, namely the Borg’s organic parts.

ee corridors

When they get near their destination, several Borg drones, many of whom are assimilated crewmembers, attack Picard’s detail. They’re forced to retreat but Data is captured.

During his retreat, Picard runs into Lily, who evacuated sickbay and separated from Crusher’s medical team after the Borg broke into the medical facility. Lily doesn’t know what is going on and orders Picard at phaser point to be taken back home. PIcard is able to convince her that she is on a ship from the future and takes her with him to a holodeck. They briefly hide there while a 1940s detective story simulation plays until two Borg enter the holodeck. Picard begins to exhibit his inner rage and transforms into a movie action hero while killing them with a holographic Tommy gun. Then he retrieves a neural processor from one of the corpses to learn the Borg’s plans.

outer space fightOne of them is to use the ship’s deflector to contact other Borg for reinforcements. This leads to one of the film’s most suspenseful moments: a dangerous battle with the enemy outside on the ship’s outer hull. They’re truly inhuman with their capability to function without spacesuits, while Picard, Worf and a redshirt named Hawk (Neal McDonough) donned sleek, white EV suits.

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